Moogaman.com

Well, welcome to another version of my Olympic footage recap in case some of you care and are interested on today’s goings ons.  Why you guys can’t just go to www.torino2006.org and see for yourself… well, I like to think that you guys just love me that much.

Today’s footage started off with the Women’s 7.5km Biathlon Sprint.  Four Germans covered by NBC didn’t do so well, but here are there stats:

Uschi Disl               1 - 2   time: 24:29.1
Katrin Apel            1 - 1   time: 24:04.9
Martina Glagow     0 - 1   time: 23:35.9
Kati Wilhelm           0 - 1   time: 22:49.8

The times are they’re finishing times and the # - # are the number of shots they missed out of five on each shooting station.  Overall, Kati Wilhelm was in 7th at the end.  The medals for that event went as follows:

Gold - France Florence Baverel-Robert
Silver - Sweden Anna Carin Olofsson
Bronze - Ukraine Lilia Efremova

After the Biathlon, the Men’s Nordic Combined Team finals finished soon after, so I got to watch the tail end of that too.  Austria had a very good final few hundred metres with Germany pulling up Silver and Finland pulling in Bronze.  The U.S. Women’s Curling Team lost another match, this time to Sweden.  The match went into an 11th End where Sweden barely pulled it out to win by one.  In an Olympic Debut, Snowboard Cross makes it’s way into our television sets.  It’s an interesting sport that is much akin to motocross on snowboards.  Of course it is on snow track, but there are many curves and bumps the racers must make their way around and over.  Well, since it’s a snowboarding event, you can imagine who won the gold medal.  Now, it wasn’t as much of a shoo-in that you might think it would be.  In fact, the Silver medalist Slovakia was actually cheated out of his Gold medal.  Why you ask?  Well, how about the U.S. rider grabbed the Slovakian rider by the jersey and pulled him behind him.  Not to mention slapping him in the face as he passed and did a dirty board slide to force the Slovakian to slow down himself.  The U.S. rider was a dirty cheater and should have been DQed in earlier rounds for showboating.  In Men’s Figure Skating, Russian Evgeni Plushenko was the first skater of the second group and when he was finished, his scores were so high no other skater could catch him.  His final score after the Short Program and Free Skate was an astonishing 258.33.  His scores in both Technical Elements and Program Composition were both above 80 points with Technical at a little over 85.  To give you an idea of what that means, among the other competitors, the highest score for either or both categories was 75.  The average score tended to be 60 Tech Elem. and 70 Program Comp.  The next highest total score was 231.21 by Swiss Stephane Lambiel.  Jeffrey Buttle of Canada pulled in Bronze with a 227.59.  Plushenko was later interviewed saying that he has one more Olympic attempt in him, so he will be at the 2008 Montreal Games.  I expect new and unprecedented tricks to arise in his repertoire in the next few years.  Expect him to retire in 2008 with another gold medal.  In Women’s Skeleton, Swiss Maya Pedersen won gold by a total of 1.23s (which is a lot in a fast-speed sport like Skeleton).  Shelley Rudman of Great Britain and Mellisa Hollingsworth-Richards of Canada won Silver and Bronze.  It was disappointing to see Germany pop down to fourth, but really, I am proud of Great Britain, they don’t win a lot of medals, so when they do, I root for them.  Look for Britain to take home a gold or silver in Men’s and Women’s Curling.  They have really good teams this year.  In Team Pursuit Speed Skating, both gender finals were on late tonight, which made me kind of mad.  I actually to wait for live TV to show the races and they didn’t even show the B Finals for either gender.  I can fucking guarantee they would have it the U.S. would have been in Bronze contention.  I wanted to see Russia overtake Japan for the Bronze in the Ladies run.  Well, the Ladies Finals went to Germany for the gold and Canada got Silver.  For the Men, Italy defeated Canada in the A Final for the Gold.  The B Final went to the Netherlands for defeating Norway by well more than a second.

Now for further news.  I will not be able to watch the Olympics over the next few days, so I will not be updating this.  I will watch the Men’s Short Track 1000m on Saturday, but after a look at what’s coming up… I’m not too concerned about what I’ll be missing.  However, like I said earlier, I will be a VERY grumpy boy if I miss the 1000m Finals on Saturday.  If I miss the 7pm broadcast, OK I’ll deal, but if I miss the midnight broadcast as well… there will be blood.  As many of you know, I am going to a LARP at VisionCon and I am leaving tomorrow.  There will be four of us in the hotel room.  John, Steve, Mike, and I are all going to be together for a while so you can imagine the high jinx that will ensue.  Well, Aufwiedersehen and I will let you know how V-Con went.